Friday, June 28, 2013

Not all the rooms in the hospital
have this wonderful sunset view of downtown Vancouver
backed by the North
Shore mountains… Some
look south and east to Mt. Baker in Washington
state, or west to Vancouver Island.

I was over on the mainland last week
to visit a friend in this room, and make sure she got home alright when her
doctors gave her the okay… Actually I started to think my job was to make sure
she even went home… the nurses and physios are really wonderful and the
food, once they let you have some, is great.It’s fairly amazing they ever get anyone to leave.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

This isn’t just the view from Jesus St.If you have a look at this link in GoogleStreetview,
, you might notice that the blue ‘Church of Mercy’ to the left of the centre of
the painting, and the building under construction to the right are actually
facing out to sea. The viewpoints I used to paint them were from the street directly
in front of each.

Pablo Picasso and Georges Bracque evolved
the technique of adding more information to an image through simultaneous
multiple viewpoints… of course they went at it with considerable more vigour
(and genius) than this tentative start.

Their brilliantly reassembled multi-faceted
images defined the beginnings of Cubism. The introduction of this concept
of multi-dimensionality in art was remarkably coincident with Einstein's theory
of the relativity of time, space, and motion… but Einstein and thousands of quantum
physicists and mathematicians since have been unable to formulate a Unified
Field Theory, harmonizing gravity and the other three fundamental forces.Is this because most people, including most
geniuses, cannot visualize more than the usual four space-time dimensions?

Sunday, June 9, 2013

The Virtual Paintout is in the Azoresthis month, and I
began motoring around the two islands that have been ‘Streetviewed’ with some
trepidation.I was there for two hours once,
during an unannounced and never-explained stop on a Lisbon to Montreal flight,
and I don’t remember seeing anything but a flat expanse of volcanic soil, and a
few trees like the ones in this painting, only much smaller.

But, to my surprise, within ten
minutes I found this (here’s a link to it)and three other very paintable scenes!I had quite a time eliminating the other
possibilities and – unless I come across other things that just have to be
painted – will probably paint another Azores Streetview next week.

Sunday, June 2, 2013

On the Gulf Islands art tour I mentioned last week, our bus sped by this fascinating structure on Hornby Island.We were going too fast to take a picture, but
I was able to find and identify the building on Google Streetview when I got
home.The Google camera car must have gone by on a day a very
popular event was taking place (Protest? Opera? Hornby is a
happening place) because it looked like every Volvo on the island was jammed into
the parking lot.

In addition to the splendidly landscaped
roof, I was intrigued by the stackwood construction – not often used for large
structures such as this. This method, also
called cordwood masonry, has been revived by the sustainability movement... Cordwood or short pieces of debarked tree are
laid at right angles to the wall surface, then held in place with masonry or fireproof and
earthquake resistant cob.

About Me

Charlene Brown is a Canadian painter who started writing about painting trips during the ten years she and her husband lived in Dubai. The Gulf Weekly began publishing her accounts of painting trips in that part of the Arabian peninsula -- then said they might consider other countries, even such exotic locations as Canada! She had written about painting trips in over twenty countries by the time her husband retired and they returned to Canada to live.